Customer Data Integration: Business Benefits

Customer Data Integration (CDI) is an application that meets the immediate, sales-driven customer-data needs of business. It is a data management process where all data related to customers is delivered to a company's touch points instantly. Customer Data Integration integrates, manages, and distributes data throughout the enterprise.

Customer knowledge is at the heart of the service industry. Customer Data Integration is all about customer knowledge ? reliable customer knowledge. It is an integrated customer data management solution that centralizes customer data to provide a reliable picture and history of customers.

Complete customer knowledge can be achieved through a Customer Data Integration system that improves, centralizes, and synchronizes data to provide an exact 360-degree view of customers. A robust information management strategy integrates an enterprise's data and software system wide to achieve the most powerful insights possible.

Customer Data Integration is a system that integrates data from a variety of sources: operational systems, all databases and data stores, outside sources, the Internet and even web and legacy applications. The goal of Customer Data Integration is to get this information and insights into the right hands asap so that they can make the right decisions.

For example, let's say a bookstore kicks off a direct-mail promotional blitz targeting prospects and customers. Meanwhile, online, new customers are ordering books. Instantly, the Customer Data Integration system goes into gear to get this new customer into the system. What is called "push update" is when new customers or old have their change of address, demographic status, customer behavior and traits, and other valuable customer characteristics updated instantly and accessed by anyone around the clock.

These "event triggers" go into action whenever there's been a change in a customer's status. Any detection of activity by a customer is noted and ventilated throughout the CRM system. A business, especially anything related to retail, online or not, simply cannot afford to be without this technology.

Implementing a Customer Data Integration application adds value to the enterprise's strategic business processes. The results empower a business to integrate customer information across the board, achieving a satisfactory and complete customer portrait. It enhances initiatives in CRM, database marketing, and campaign and supply chain management. It enables web and business intelligence integration and delivers instantly whatever level of data complexity that is needed

Customer Data Integration is indispensable to CRM strategy. It determines the quality of the customer relationship. Since knowing the complete purchasing and behavior patterns of customers is a must, it is nice to have an application that will also incorporate all of the products, purchased and unpurchased, by the customer to get a deeper, more complete customer profile. However, a business owner also needs to be informed about marketing and customer service interactions to gauge the ROI of customers.

Data Drives Implementation

This information comes, of course, from internal data. But there is also external data available. Service-industry professionals would also like to collect demographic background on their customers and, ideally, be able to forecast their purchasing behavior. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts when such information provides insights about the plus and minuses of each customer, including who should be targeted for specific products and marketing campaigns.

Internal data makes up the majority view of a customer. Since it is not practical for a business to invest in internal processes to gather external data, they can turn to a Customer Data Integration provider for implementation and expertise. They can install a data distribution technology that provides connectivity linking all CRM systems. With a Customer Data Integration solution, a business establishes a single reference point for all customer information integration requests.

"Invasiveness" is kept to a minimum, requiring little or no changes to the existing system. There is a protocol allowing CRM systems to communicate with each other. The information is then distributed to the relevant application, touch point, database or employee when and where needed. As fresh data is added, everything improves, from the accuracy of reporting to customer service. The technology even enables foolproof security and privacy measures across all CRM and customer interaction systems, such as rules that govern a customer's right to privacy

Customer Data Integration provides a fast option for customer integration projects. The evolution from technology exclusively addressing data cleansing and warehousing to Customer Data Integration, provides organizations today with a full suite of benefits, such as Enterprise Information Integration (EII) as well as hybrid EII; extract/transform/load (ETL); next generation operational data silos; real time back planes; with the most accurate matching capability available, it finds every possible match through candidate selection; and, conversely, employs comparison techniques

Current Customer Data Integration technology minimizes variations to improve results. One of its most powerful attributes is the ability to hone in on customer information and report back accurately if, say, there is an issue with matching names. The scope of customer Data Integration technology is so vast that it can include current and historical attributes. It is also robust enough to address and repair data errors. It can compare customer attributes to produce a weighted score in the case of matching records: if the score is high, then it is all the more likely that the records represent the same person

"Reference Database"

For optimum results, customer data must be distributed, standardized and managed through a single reference point. The "reference database" is another significant upgrade in Customer Data Integration and CRM software. A business must maintain one at all costs. It captures and snares any and all customer transactions. It draws from all of the data providers available. It takes all of this information to create a 'referential' view of the customer. The reference database houses the lifetime name and address history of customers, and so much more. A robust linking technology, the reference database links customers and businesses to their current and past data, such as email, phone numbers, social security (if available), addresses, and so on.

Customer data must be, in a word, flawless. It must be accurate and complete whether it reflects an individual, a business or a married couple.

Think Before You Implement

To implement technologies that offer such specialized features like "knowledge bases" and "building links," is highly specialized, and many Small and Medium Size Businesses (SMBs) find implementing a CRM solution like Customer Data Integration costly and challenging. SMBs are also learning that there are costs resulting from customer "invisibility," duplicate data maintenance, and lost business. These losses are unacceptable and affect growth.

Therefore, when and if a business builds, rents or purchases a Customer Data Integration application, a solid foundation of customer data must be in place. It is a solution that provides the most comprehensive and reliable data to all touch points, systems and business intelligence platforms.

Finally, the Customer Data Integration solution must be a global strategy. The economy today is global in nature, as is the Internet that created it. Therefore, businesses everywhere must think and act in terms of a global CRM / CDI strategy.

The ROI in CDI

No business can achieve a return on investment (ROI) from any CRM application unless it fosters customer success one customer at a time. Customer-service employees must see every customer as an individual, not a group. CRM strategy must be based on campaigns driven by customer preferences. To achieve ROI in Customer Data Integration means building the best version of the truth by creating a total view of the customer from the existing databases.

This is done through embedded views within the application or interface. This provides reliable customer reference data that is delivered to all systems and users. Customer Data Integration can create an absolute data store about customers than can be relied upon as the final source of truth. Once a customer reference store is in place a complete 360?view of their customers emerges.

Conclusion

Having trustworthy data on customers can be achieved throughout all applications and enterprise systems to improve quality, from customer service to sales calls to marketing initiatives. However, customer information constantly changes. This inconsistency leads to erroneous conclusions about customers and marketing initiatives. That spells trouble if not bankruptcy.

To correct this problem create a data store with a Customer Data Integration solution. Only that can unify customer data across different applications into one version of the truth. A Customer Data Integration solution can deliver a complete, reliable view of customer. Therefore, by creating the building blocks of accurate, reliable customer reference data, the ROI goals of Customer Data Integration implementation can be achieved.